


Solace

by CandlesInTheWell



Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar, Sunless Sea
Genre: Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-16 09:42:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16083503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CandlesInTheWell/pseuds/CandlesInTheWell
Summary: Peace in exile, and consolation from an unexpected source.(The Navigator finds a friend...)





	Solace

The isle of Codex is not wholly silent. Nothing is, until the final end, and bare as this place is, it’s still alive. Waves lap against the shore, monkeys chatter as they leap from rock to rock, flames crackle. But it’s quiet here, and unmoored from memory, and that’s all the man who was the Navigator truly needs.

As he sits outside the cave and watches the sparks rising from his driftwood fire, a cat slinks around an outcropping of rock, looking scarred and tattered, thin as a shadow; someone must’ve put the poor creature ashore and steamed on. He wonders why – and then he doesn’t. He’s seen this mad-eyed beast before.

He ought to toss a stone, he thinks – not to hurt it, just to scare it, chase it on to easier prey. What he tosses instead is a strip of dried, salted fish. Rations are scare here, but he’s seldom hungry these days, and he has enough to spare. The cat catches it from the air, gulps it down whole, and sits there blinking at him, though he has no idea what it sees. A kindred soul, perhaps. Meat, more likely. But what of it? He has no enmity to offer, and no right to protest. He throws the rest of his fish, and turns back to his fire. 

After a very long time, the cat approaches, head bent low and tail twitching. Its fur is matted and stiff with salt, and its claws dig into his leg when it climbs onto his lap and settles there, feeling far heavier than anything so threadbare ought to be. Perhaps its secrets weigh it down, like his own did once, before he let them drift up into the frozen air of this place like smoke from a funeral pyre. He sits stiller than he ever has, barely breathing, as the cat lays its head down on folded paws and those yellow eyes narrow to slits, then close completely.

Even this starveling creature, he supposes, must sleep sometimes. Even it must hunger for warmth, and there’s little enough of that here that he can’t begrudge a fire shared. When he rests a hand against its back, it barely stirs, beyond the flick of an ear, the flex of claws, less pain than he’d been expecting. As seconds pass, its breathing slows, and gentles into something he recognizes as sleep without nightmares. Quiet like this, it’s a more fragile thing than he’d expected, a small bundle of bone and fur and too little of anything else – but perhaps, in the clean, empty stillness of this isle, it might become something different.

Perhaps he’s not the only one who might find peace here.


End file.
